Knarr

Set out two markets and your ship

Separate Trading Lands and Lands of Influence into shuffled decks, revealing three of each. Prepare Viking cards by player count: with two remove 3 and 4 marked cards; with three remove 4; with four use all. Shuffle and expose five Vikings in the colored board slots.

Everyone uses the normal side of a ship. Each takes two starting Vikings of different colors from the deck into a face-up crew, following the starting setup depicted below the ship. Put one recruit and one bracelet on the ship; keep two additional tokens of each beside it as unavailable supply. Put score and reputation markers on their starting spaces. Draw three Vikings privately. Choose a starting player at random; remember that seat.

Collect reputation, then recruit or explore

First add victory points equal to the highest numbered value reached on your reputation track. Then choose exactly one action.

Recruit: play one Viking from your three-card hand onto your same-color crew column. Collect every reward visible at the top of that column, including the new card, in any order. Take the face-up Viking from the board slot matching the COLOR YOU PLAYED, not necessarily a Viking whose own color matches. You may instead spend one recruit to choose any of the five cards. Refill that slot.

Explore: choose one of the six destinations. Discard crew cards matching the number and colors in its upper-left cost. Any-color symbols require the specified matching group; four-of-one-color means four cards of a single color. Each recruit token you spend replaces one required Viking. Put the destination above your ship and gain its upper-right immediate rewards. Refill from the same destination deck.

Once per turn, before or after that action, you may trade. Spend one, two or three bracelets to gain every reward in the first one, two or three columns of BOTH your ship and all owned destinations. A two-bracelet trade includes the first and second columns, not just the second.

Keep resources and crew separate

Victory icons advance the score marker; reputation icons advance the reputation marker. Recruit and bracelet icons add those tokens to the ship, up to three of each; overflow is lost. An icon that draws a Viking directly into the crew does so without activating its column.

Whenever the Viking deck empties, shuffle its discard pile. If both are empty, each player tied for the largest crew discards one chosen Viking, then form the needed deck. A recruit action replaces the card played from your hand; exploration normally leaves the hand unchanged.

Finish the current round at 40

When anyone reaches 40 or more victory points, complete that person's turn and continue only until the player immediately before the original starting player has acted. Everyone receives the same number of turns. Highest score wins; tied players compare their combined recruits and bracelets. If still tied, share the win as an explicit house resolution.

Before starting, demonstrate a recruit into a column with two cards and point to the resulting three rewards. Then show the destination cost that would remove those cards. This makes the central tradeoff clear.

Keep the two tracks distinct

Reputation pays victory points at the start of your next turn; advancing reputation does not itself move the victory marker unless an icon also awards victory points. Read destination costs aloud before discarding crew. Keep the ship's active tokens separate from its spare supply.

A recommendation discussion includes Knarr among games one couple enjoys. For a two-player introduction, demonstrate recruitment and exploration together so the crew-spending tradeoff is clear.

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Ideas & Twists

Choose a variation together before you start.